software development concepts
I was browsing around the CouchDb wiki yesterday when I saw Damien Katz’ hilarious description of how technical documentation really gets written. You know, in the real world: Welcome to the world of technical documentation! The situation you are in is no different from any other tech writer. The technical
software development concepts
As I alluded to in the T-Shirt post, Coding Horror stickers have arrived: These are custom, two color die-cut vinyl stickers based on the high resolution vector art so graciously provided by our kind benefactor, Steve McConnell. To give you an idea of scale, the coin in the picture is
properties
I occasionally see code with properties like this: private int name; public int Name { get { return name; } set { name = value; } } As I see it, there are three things to consider here. 1. When is a property not a property? When it's a glorified public variable. Why waste everyone&
programming languages
I’ve written before about the dubious value of functional specifications. If you want to experience the dubious value of specifications first hand, try writing a tool to read and write ID3 tags. ID3 tags describe the metadata for an MP3 file, such as Artist, Album, Track, and so forth.
programming languages
Stiff recently asked a few programmers a series of open-ended questions: * How did you learn programming? Were schools of any use? * What’s the most important skill every programmer should have? * Are math and physics important skills for a programmer? * What will be the next big thing in computer programming?
xml
Here’s a helpful article that documents common pitfalls to avoid when composing XML documents. Nobody wants to be called an XML Bozo by Tim Bray, the co-editor of the XML specification, right? There seem to be developers who think that well-formedness is awfully hard — if not impossible — to get
programming languages
A few people recently pointed out that my personal branding isn’t everything that it could be. Joseph Cooney even took matters into his own hands. Well, I contacted the big man himself, Steve McConnell, and he graciously provided me a high resolution vector file of the original Coding Horror
programming languages
Brad Abrams was a founding member of the .NET common language runtime team way back in 1998. He’s also the co-author of many essential books on .NET, including both volumes of the .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference. I was at a presentation Brad gave to the Triangle .NET
software development concepts
For the final installment in the How Good an Estimator Are You series, I’d like to start with an anecdote from chapter 7 of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art : Suppose you’re at a reception for the world’s best software estimators. The room is packed, and you’
software development concepts
Here are the answers to the quiz presented in How Good an Estimator Are You? If you’re concerned that a quiz like this has nothing to do with software development, consider: In software, you aren’t often asked to estimate the volume of the Great Lakes or the surface
software development concepts
Chapter 2 of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art opens with a quiz designed to test your estimation abilities. It’s an interesting exercise, so I thought everyone might like to give it a shot. * For each question, fill in the upper and lower bounds so that you have a
software development concepts
One of the central themes in McConnell’s Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art is the ominously named Cone of Uncertainty. The cone defines statistically predictable levels of project estimate uncertainty at each stage of the project. The cone has several ramifications, the most important of which is that early